Qantas Group reaffirms plans for the return of international travel

In light of Australia’s hard border policy in recent weeks shifting to one which aims to have the country fully open to international travel by the end of the year. Australia’s flag-carrier, Qantas and its budget subsidiary, Jetstar have jumped at the new opportunity, with the Chief Executive of the Qantas Group, Alan Joyce setting out the airline’s plans for an accelerated restart of its international network

On Friday, the Qantas Group made a series of announcements regarding its international network and fleet, in addition to launching a new international route. As well as accelerating the restart of many international routes, the airline group plans to have their whole workforce back again by the end of this year, the flag carrier even outlined plans to bring back its fleet of Airbus A380s.

Following the recent decision by the Australian state of New South Wales to allow quarantine-free travel in and out of the state from the 1st of November 2021. The airline plans to resume international flights out of Sydney to destinations such as Johannesburg, Phuket, Singapore and Bangkok much earlier than previously planned.

Flights to Johannesburg will now resume from Sydney Kingsford-Smith Airport (SYD) on January 5th 2022; three months earlier than previously planned. This route was previously operated by a Boeing 747 aircraft but will now be flown by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft on a three times weekly basis, following the retirement of the Qantas 747 in July 2020.

Qantas stated that it is also bringing forward flights from Sydney to Singapore and Bangkok and will resume on the 23rd of November 2021 and the 14th of January 2022 respectively. Both of these routes will be served by Qantas’Airbus A330-200 and A330-300 aircraft. In terms of frequency, the Singapore route will be operated three times weekly, while there will be five flights a week on the Bangkok route.